Fangirls Quotes

“To be a serious fan is to be in a relationship with distance. Just like the act of waiting, engaging with distance is a Sisyphean task. Each act of fandom is an attempt to bridge some gap, to obliterate or quietly dissolve the space with wanting, caring, knowing. Sometimes we’re content with distance, there’s a respect for it and the contractual understanding between us and our object that’s borne from it. Sometimes we might resent it, but we can’t forget it: that’s the deal. The type of closeness and distance we have depends on the artist we choose–or are compelled–to follow.”
― Hannah Ewens, Fangirls

“We’re in a time now where, more than ever, girls and young queer people create modern mainstream music and fan cultures with their outlooks and actions. They’re the ones at the helm of fan practices that the public have a vague awareness of: tweeting their favourite artist incessantly, writing fan fiction, religiously updating devoted social media profiles, buying ‘meet-and-greet’ tickets and following the band around to various show dates. This is slowly being acknowledged, in part for the money it generates for a changing music industry, and in part because of the ‘women in music’ literature that has been published in the 2010s.”
― Hannah Ewens, Fangirls

“The title sequence exploded with emotion. ‘It’s like a drug addiction,’ says one girl. ‘I’ve met them sixty-four times,’ swears another. A voiceover dramatically declares, ‘They’ll stop at nothing to get close to the boys,’ before cutting to a pink-haired nineteen-year-old from Northern England called Becky who points high up a building and says, ‘I was sat outside your room when you was asleep, Zayn’. These girls are Crazy About One Direction.”
― Hannah Ewens, Fangirls

“About halfway through my research, I realised what it meant to be a fan. Fandom is a portmanteau of fan and kingdom–there is, as that would suggest, a king or queen regent but also a territory and community of followers. To be a fan is to scream alone together. To go on a collective journey of self-definition. It means pulling on threads of your own narrative and doing so with friends and strangers who feel like friends.”
― Hannah Ewens, Fangirls